Saturday, January 19, 2013

Land-grabbing Nightmares – Will these ever end?

Last month, I
was in Bangladesh visiting
Dhaka and Chittagong.
Dhaka, the capital city with a population in
excess of twelve million, is now one of the megacities of our time. Chittagong, with the major infrastructure projects being
undertaken for the city, including adeep sea port, the second largest city is fast becoming a regional
transit hub for regional neighbors like India,
China, Bhutan and Nepal.

Like many
parts of south-east Asia, there are visible
signs of material progress everywhere. High rise buildings now dot most parts
of these cities, and roads are jammed with foreign cars, mostly imported from Japan. Traffic
jams on major arteries of these cities are regular features costing millions of
lost hours every day. It took me more than three hours to reach Paribagh from
the Dhaka airport, a trip which should not
have taken more than an hour. Some flyovers and inter-district roadways are
currently being constructed to alleviate the chronic problems faced by most
commuters. In spite of the fact that prices of most commodities have steadily
gone up no one seems to be starving these days, thus pointing to higher
purchasing power of the people. For too long, Bangladesh,
next to China,
has been known for its garment industry. Nowadays, the country proudly sells
its ocean-going vessels to European countries. These are positives.

On the
negative side, however, Bangladesh
is failing – like India and Pakistan – in
matters of law & order, security and land-ownership. Only days before my
arrival, some criminal students (now jailed) – rather professional killers -
had killed an innocent man on a street of Dhaka.
Such crimes were simply unheard of when I grew up in Bangladesh.

Of particular
concern is the land-grabbing of both rural and urban land by domestic actors. With scarcity of land, and its price having
skyrocketed in the past decade, many land-grabbing syndicates have emerged that
prey upon private landowners, especially targeting those properties that are owned
by expatriates. With support from some unscrupulous influential people these
criminals have encroached on private and public lands with false documents and
obtained court decrees to confirm their illicit ownership, often with help of immoral
lawyers, corrupt members of the judiciary branch of the government and officials
in the land-administration and management departments. They use local musclemen
with guns and daggers, including criminal students, and corrupt officials
within the local administrations. So corrupt has the government land-administration
department become that a senior friend of mine, who was a principal of a medical
college, told me that he was asked to pay a hefty bribe for a simple mutation
job which required transferring ownership from his deceased parents to his
siblings. Threatened by such chronic problems, most of the time, land owners
feel obliged to sell their lands at a price well below the market value.

Since 2005
when my own family properties in Khulshi, Chittagong, were targeted for illegal
land-grab by a criminal land grabbing syndicate that was led by a local fraud
Jaker Hosain Chowdhury (known as Jaker master), who once worked as a
bell-ringer for a school/madrasa and later imprisoned multiple times for forgery
and fraudulent activities, and had the explicit support from a powerful MP, I
came across many victims of such crimes. An analysis of their saga unveiled the
modi operandi of many of these criminal land-grabbing syndicates, which follow
a typical pattern, as shown below:

(1)Buy the so-called 'power of attorney', often through
illegal money-laundering, from family members of a dead zamindar (who had moved
to India after Partition of Pakistan) now living in India.

(2)In that so-called Deed of Power-of-Attorney, deliberately
falsify information by showing the peasant or “raiyat” properties -- tenanted
(projabili) lands of land-owners -- as part of the zamindari khas land so as to
target such properties for potential land-grab. It is worth noting here that the
zamindars under the British Raj were responsible for collection of revenues from
the projabili lands (tenanted). With the passage of the East Bengal Estate
Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950, which is the basic or fundamental law for
land management in Bangladesh (previously East Pakistan), the entire Zamindari
system was dissolved. The act established a 33-acre land ceiling on private
landowners, with the excess transferred to the government upon payment of
compensation, and all the raiyats were made owners and asked to pay their
revenue directly to the Government. [The 1984 Land Reforms Ordinance placed a
20-acre ceiling on acquisition or holding of agricultural land and invalidated benami transactions, in which a person
purchases land in the name of another so as to evade the land ceiling.]

(3)If the previous two methods could not be employed,
falsify land deeds in collaboration with the corrupt officers in the government
Land Deeds & Records Department. It is widely rumored that an “official” falsified
record could be obtained from these vital offices with a payment of approx. 1%
of the actual property value.

(4)File the so-called 'Partition Suits' on behalf of the
dead zamindar’s family members (who had become Indian citizens) without the
knowledge of the real owners and get a verdict in their favor so as to prepare
the groundwork for future land-grab with support of government agencies. (Note:
in these cases, the real owner is not made aware that his/her land is being
contested by these crooked attorneys, and as such, are often ill prepared to
put up an injunction order in time to stop such a court-decreed possession or
land-grab by the criminal syndicate.)

(5)Grab the property of the legal owner of the (erstwhile)
‘raiyat’ property by evicting him/her and/or his/her tenants with tens/hundreds
of criminal cadre behind. In this scheme of things: the local thana is already
managed by the land-grabbing syndicate, and the corrupt politician is engaged
for his/her support so that the entire criminal project will move smoothly with
no actions expected to come from the law enforcing agencies; no court order is
even served to the affected family who did not know that there was an old case,
resurrected from the early Pakistan days, on its property and that the court,
without an independent, unbiased inquiry, had already issued an execution case
for possession of his/her legally owned and possessed land by the land-grabbing
syndicate that had wielded its power of attorney;

(6)In the meantime, sell the property to tens of greedy
buyers willing to buy land at prices significantly lower than actual market
value, making them all a party to the criminal loot;

(7)Before the actual land-grab, sometimes the legal owner
is threatened to pay an exorbitant extortion money (which may run into several
crores of Taka), failing which he/she is threatened about the dire
consequences of losing his/her entire land
on which he/she had been living and paying taxes, revenues, bills, etc. for all
these years;

(8)Upon illegal land-grab, quickly change the face of the
property by demolishing old structures/buildings and repopulate the properties
with new buyers;

(9)Use connection with powerful, corrupt and greedy
politicians, government officers, police and magistrates, etc. to control
police and administrative actions against them. (Note: many a time all such
people colluding with and aiding the criminal syndicate are promised and
delivered a piece of the looted land/apartment/properties.)

(10)If all previous tactics had failed, harass the family
of the legal owners with false cases and threaten them with death threats so
that they become broke - financially and psychologically.

None of these criminal
schemes should come as a surprise to the member of the parliament and government
ministers. According to the Land Minister’s statement of 4/2/2010 in the Parliament,
a total of 1.3 million-acre public land has been grabbed by such syndicates. In
the private sector the total grab may even be higher. With a very flawed and
corrupt system it goes without saying that the land grabbing culture has been
increasing. Without the necessary wherewithal - financial and otherwise -- the
legitimate landowners are fighting a losing battle. They can’t fight the battle
singlehanded without government intervention and sincerity to stop their
sufferings. They need help to protect and secure their ownership rights against
these criminal syndicates that have the necessary muscle to wield, and dirty
money to spend and buy influences by corrupting various branches of the
government to victimize others.

The Government
of Bangladesh owes it to its law-abiding and tax-paying citizens to stop the
crimes of these powerful land-grabbing syndicates. If Bangladesh is
serious about digital revolution and transforming the country to a developed
nation, it must create an environment where the property rights are secured
which would help not only to retain its own talents in-house but also attract
highly talented expatriates to return and contribute in nation-building. Many
of the expatriates want nothing better than to return and help the country
through their acquired wealth, skills and talents. They are, however, haunted
by nightmares and frustrated by government’s utter negligence on this vital
issue that is so fundamental.

Laws must be
enacted that close the legal loopholes and protect genuine landowners from the
Pakistan time (pre-liberation of 1971), without which most family properties,
esp. those of the non-resident Bangladeshis and expatriates, would be grabbed
by criminal land-grabbing syndicates. A concerted effort from the Ministry of
Law and Ministry of Home Affairs is urgently necessary to go after these
criminals of the land-grabbing syndicate so that they know that they will not
be tolerated in Bangladesh.
The sooner the better!

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I have a long history of a peaceful activist in my effort towards improving human rights and creating a just and equitable world. I have written extensively in the arena of humanity, global politics, social conscience and human rights since 1980, many of which have appeared in newspapers, magazines, journals and the Internet. I have tirelessly championed the cause of the disadvantaged, the poor and the forgotten here in Americas and abroad. Commenting on my articles, others have said, "His meticulously researched essays and articles combined with real human dimensions on the plight of the displaced peoples of Rohingya in Myanmar, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo and Palestine, and American Muslims in the post-9/11 era have made him a singular important intellectual offering a sane voice with counterpoints to the shrill threats of the oppressors and the powerful. He offers a fresh and insightful perspective on a whole generation of a misunderstood and displaced people with little or no voice of their own." I have authored 13 books, 10 of which are now available through the Amazon.com.